TC:Rural's Living Well with a Disability featured in Centers for Disease Control Awareness Campaign

March 27, 2017

The Research and Training Center on Disability in Rural Communities (RTC:Rural) at the University of Montana Rural Institute is honored to have their Living Well with a Disability (LWD) program featured in a targeted awareness campaign sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The six-month campaign Self-Management Education: Learn More. Feel Better. is being conducted in Wisconsin to promote self-management education (SME) as a tool to manage chronic health conditions.

LWD is one of the six SME programs featured on the Disability-Specific SME Programs campaign website. The CDC has been involved with LWD since its initial development at RTC:Rural in 1987, and has continued to provide funding, support, and promotion of the program at various levels throughout the years. Most recently, RTC:Rural received funding to continue the LWD Program's history of research and development under a five year grant to translate it into a state-of-the-art online health promotion curriculum. This grant funding is provided by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) within the Administration for Community Living, at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

LWD is a 10 week peer-facilitated workshop focusing on the health-management needs of people with disabilities, and is currently offered in 46 states by over 250 Centers for Independent Living and internationally.

Grounded in consumer choice and peer support and based on independent living philosophy, LWDintroduces and builds the self-management skills needed to set and achieve quality-of-life goals. It provides tools for managing health and making healthy lifestyle changes, increasing physical activity, developing and maintaining healthy relationships, improving nutrition, avoiding depression and frustration, and advocating for community changes. Notably, participants' goal-setting and problem-solving activities drive their health behavior changes, linking health with function.

"The Living Well program got me beyond the feeling that life was over and I was useless," said Judy, a workshop participant, in her online testimonial. "The program not only gave me information, it also gave me the opportunity to discuss common problems with other disabled people who had problems and needed help. I began to realize that I could help others with many of the situations that I had gone through and still had a lot to give."